Interesting shakeup, with a week to go, in Australia ‘s election. The Liberal/National Coalition, seeking a third term, is facing a tough challenge from Labor. Looks like, assuming the opposition leader does not make disparaging remarks, change could come to Canberra. The New South Wales Labor leader made some bad remarks about Chinese voters in the last week of the state legislature campaign, and the swing against the coalition went to other parties.

Australia’s Preferential Voting system could be interesting, as it will come down to where the smaller parties send their preferences. Liberals usually preference the Greens last, Labor tends to preference One Nation below the Coalition, One Nation and National having a preference agreement that puts Liberals in a tough sppt. Prime Minister Morrisson said, after the NRA scandal, and remarks doubting thr Port Arthur Massacre, he said the Liberals wpould preference One Nation below Labor and the Greens this time. Problem is, They are merged with the Nationals in Queensland, and the Coalition needs Queensland. Then their is the United Australia Party, and it’s founder, a mining magnate, who is entering politics for a second time, could hold the balance of power in the Senate. Also, in Australia, it’s against the law to not turnout at the polls.

With all those organizations supporting all of your political, social and economic goals, why do you complain constantly on this blog about Fox News? You people have them outnumbered by quite a margin. Do you believe you views are moral values or some other such delusion?

No idea how he’d do as a Senate candidate next year. But he’d probably flip a House district seat if that was the route he chose. Peters is a far weaker candidate than Stabenow was.

John James meets with Trump as GOP recruits him for Michigan run

Senate Republicans have few opportunities to expand their majority in 2020, as the GOP already holds most of the Senate seats up in next year’s election. But they are are eager to see James challenge first-term Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan and potentially expand their map. Peters is one of just two Senate Democrats running in states Trump carried in 2016. … On the House side, Republicans are recruiting James as a possible candidate in the state’s 11th Congressional District, which neighbors Detroit, according to a Republican working on House races who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens won the district last year by more than 6 percentage points after two-term Republican Rep. Dave Trott retired.

However, a panel of federal judges recently tossed out Michigan’s congressional map, throwing next year’s House elections into uncertainty and complicating recruiting efforts for both parties there.

We journeyed to Vancouver, BC for a long weekend in February (and Railfan, we took Amtrak – my first-ever train trip of more than a few minutes). Stayed downtown and on a walking trip to a restaurant we passed this monument:

Biggest loser: YLB. She’s having trouble envisioning herself on her knees in front of Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. Beto kneepads are far more appealing, after all.

Beto O’Rourke plans ‘reintroduction’ as 2020 buzz fizzles

But since his mid-March campaign launch, the buzz surrounding the former congressman has evaporated. Competing in a massive field of Democratic White House hopefuls, O’Rourke has sagged in the polls. He’s made few promises that resonated or produced headline-grabbing moments, instead driving around the country meeting with voters at mostly small events.

We already knew you disgusting freaks love Putin, loath women and rape caged toddlers and farm animals, but you also torture and kill cute little kittens, too?? WTF? With that, you have now crossed a line, Doctor.

4, Your premises are false. Any “logical” arguments that flow from such premises are thus bound to be false as well.

There is no dungeon under that pizza parlor. There isn’t even a basement. No children are being held captive there. Because children cannot be held captive in a place that does not exist. Nobody is performing ritual sacrifices of the children. Because it is impossible to perform ritual sacrifices of captive children who do not exist.

These stories have succeeded in duping you not because of their cleverness, but because of your stupidity.

While statistically significant numbers of voters responding to surveys asking to “self-identify” may choose the label “fiscally conservative/socially liberal”, when surveys are conducted to measure voter response to policy those voters disappear. Many voters like the sound of “fiscally conservative/socially liberal” as an identifying label for various reasons. But when detailed surveys are conducted to discover policy preferences it turns out it is just that: a label, and only a label.

Part of the explanation for Trump’s success, not just in the general election but also in the Republican primary is owing to his campaign’s exploitation of this fallacy of conventional political wisdom. Trump’s populist messaging explicitly emphasized socially conservative themes while vaguely signalling economic progressivism. While Clinton, being true to her DLC/Third Way roots and fundamentally loyal to her donor class, explicitly emphasized progressive social policy while vaguely signalling economic conservatism. Thus the true voter battleground of non-aligned voters was conceded from the outset.

A successful Democratic campaign will focus on progressive economic policy that is known be be enormously popular across a broad cross section of social views. Support for policy proposals like single payer, higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, financial industry regulation, and public investments in infrastructure jobs cut across social and even class divides and micro targets the largest pool of persuadable voters available to any campaign.

*Just one of the many longitudinal voter studies showing this emerging conclusion.

You (among a great many PizzaCannibal conspiracists including Devin Nunes’ Cow) have been pimping FISC for more than two years. Now to have it come down to Joe diGenova probably explains everything anybody needs to know about your investment “strategy”.

In Re 16, Even if you don’t agree that the best Democratic campaign will be one that places a targeted emphasis on progressive economic proposals, it is still worth understanding that Trump’s economic populism in 2016 is also his greatest vulnerability in 2020.

Having promised, and then delivered on a breathtakingly cruel and punishing agenda of social conservatism he has done literally nothing on economic populism. Worse, in truth his pathetically few accomplishments on the domestic economy have been blatantly slanted in favor of economic elites at the expense of the working and middle class wage earners.

That fact produces a glaring vulnerability for Trump and the GOP in a number of key battleground states. Democrats cannot afford to ignore such a vulnerability, neither in terms of campaign messaging, nor in terms of GOTV and recruitment.

Among reachable voters sensitive to questions of character and judgment Trump has mostly already lost. But among those reachable voters not concerned with his personal or even political corruption and his abysmal moral character “so long as he gets the job done” his abandonment of economic populism and his failure to perform is his one great weakness. Many of these voters are losing their health insurance, being laid off, or having their hours cut back. Some of these voters can be persuaded to change their votes. Still others can be persuaded to sit the election out. Targeting that effort to the 100,000 swing state voters who handed Trump the electoral college must be part of any winning strategy.

“I’ve got all the time in the world.” Not if your blood sugar and BMI have anything to say about it. But I suppose you should have thought of that before choosing a specialty that involved sitting for 16 hours a day. Don’t worry. We’ll always have kind things to say about you once you’re gone. Just ask Piddles.

Which brings me to this: There are three kinds of facts in the world — true facts, legal facts, and political facts. In the latter two cases, as was explained to Alice, the facts can be whatever you want them to be.

@17 Only a court can determine whether the extensions were illegal, jackass. Horowitz’s opinion is just that, his opinion.

“And y’all HA libbies, this is how you’ll get another 8 years of Trump.”

Interesting assertion considering that 99% of American voters have never heard of Michael Horowitz, don’t know what a FISA extension is, and don’t care. But while we’re talking about arcane legal procedures, it’s worth mentioning that a rather higher percentage of the public knows what subpoenas are and what happens to those who defy them.

Huh, the guy the NRA board picked unanimously. That’s how much Ollie North sucks.

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre billed the group’s ad agency $39,000 for one day of shopping at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique, $18,300 for a car and driver in Europe, and had the agency cover $13,800 in rent for a summer intern, according to internal docs.

“For me, it is becoming increasingly clear that the price of unregulated globalisation, mass immigration and the free movement of labour is paid for by the lower classes,” she wrote in a recent biography.

Denmark’s current right-wing coalition government last year enacted the most anti-immigration legislation in Danish history and, rather than position her party in stark opposition, Frederikson has embraced much of it.

Under her leadership, the SD have called for a cap on “non-western immigrants”, for asylum seekers to be expelled to a reception centre in North Africa, and for all immigrants to be forced to work 37 hours a week in exchange for benefits.

I think it was QoS McHillbilly who showcased an asshole state lawmaker in PA for harassing an abortion protester.

Turns out the asshole (the lawmaker, not QoS McHillbilly) wasn’t done and decided to harass a 13 year-old girl and a 15 year-old girl for having the chutzpah to express their budding First Amendment rights by protesting.

Didn’t work out the way the asshole (again, not QoS McHillbilly) wanted. He’s on camera harassing young girls. Oh, and this:

Supporting Hillary Clinton all these years really didn’t turn out the way y’all libbies wanted, did it?

“For pro-life folks, these are huge victories,” said Sue Liebel, state director for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. “And I think they’re indicative of the momentum and excitement and the hope that’s happening with changes in the Supreme Court and having such a pro-life president.”

The damage she did to the liberal movement is really incalculable. Unless it’s measured in federal judgeships.

President Donald Trump is in striking range of flipping another federal appeals court to a majority of Republican-appointed judges, this one based in his home state of New York.

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Joseph Bianco to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a 54 to 42 vote that included some Democratic support. A second appointment to that court, Consovoy McCarthy Park partner Michael Park, is expected to be confirmed this week after the chamber voted to end debate on his nomination.

When Trump makes additional appointments for vacancies that will be left by two judges who recently announced their retirements, Dennis Jacobs and Christopher Droney, the 13-member court will be majority Republican-appointed.

@35 I know you posted this to be an asshole and of course all YOU posted were the parts where they talked about removing the brown people. That article upplayed the anti immigrant aspect and downplayed the anti inequailty aspect

“for under Frederiksen the party has been ruthlessly reshaped: dragged to the left economically – and sharply to the right on immigration. “For me, it is becoming increasingly clear that the price of unregulated globalisation, mass immigration and the free movement of labour is paid for by the lower classes,” she wrote in a recent biography.”

I read that as her voters don’t want to compete with workers who are deprecate to work for much less. Just as a union doesn’t want to compete with scabs who will work for much less, her voters don’t want to compete with off shore workers who work for a fraction and pay no danish taxes. There is no upside if you are a worker.

For a country that doesn’t fawn over religion like we do here, I can see the justification of a burqa and niqab ban. There, the state says women are equal and they don’t let religion negate that.

“For the young campaigners in Copenhagen, the policy seemed to be an unpleasant necessity. “I’m not a fan of the burqa ban,” Clemmensen admitted. “But to me there has been too much focus on it, compared with the environment, growing inequality and the financial sector.””

I don’t understand the need some people have to be racist, the need to reject and kill the Other. I’m sure in 50 years, sages will find that the internet was the cause because it seemed to rise as the internet took off, but it is disappointing now

How to save Europe’s centre left To defeat the populists, social democrats must heed voters’ sense of insecurityhttps://www.ft.com/content/85df0380-2391-11e8-8138-569c3d7ab0a7 “The answer is to strengthen the social contract and restore the balance between markets and people. It is the historic mission of social democracy to save capitalism from itself.”

A pharmacist’s “strongly held religious beliefs” do not allow them to treat a gay man unequally and deny him medicine, or a interracial couple, or a woman or anyone they just doesn’t approve of…in the name of their “religion” be it Christianity or Muslim or Satanism or the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster.

@35 Yes, let’s Balkanize the whole fucking world; no cross-border migration or trade, nationalism to the fore, every country for itself and armed to the teeth. Conservatives love to relive the past; it’s gonna be August 1914 all over again. And Doctor Dumbfuck is on top of it.

Please tell us that you finally learned how to use text expansion so we can know you haven’t had to laboriously type every fucking letter of that inane tripe thousands of times in these comment threads like you had to do with your stupid fucking #iloveputin hashtags.

Rape victims are forced to give birth; Women with deformed fetuses die in childbirth; Poor women are saddled with children they can’t support; Women go to prison for having miscarriages; Death sentences are meted to women who have abortions; Profoundly deformed children must live a life of severe disability;

All in the name of private religious beliefs.

Seeing this happen will make Doctor Dumbfuck happy. Because he’s a dumbfuck.

The Georgia signee won the long jump earlier on Saturday, too, at 25 feet and 4.5 inches in just two jumps. He currently holds the Texas record at 26-3.5, which is the seventh-best distance in high school track and field history.

“I wasn’t aiming for any big records,” Boling said, via the Houston Chronicle. “Like in the long jump I only took two jumps because I just wanted to be rested because I had so many events today. I just had to do my job and get as many points for the team as possible.”

Of course the real reason they’re against abortion, and especially poor minorities getting abortions, is because it shrinks the indigenous pool of future cheap labor and forces them to import their cheap labor.

John Morgan, a well-known Orlando trial attorney who successfully backed an initiative to legalize medical marijuana, chided Gillum on Twitter for not spending money given to the Tallahassee mayor’s political committee. Forward Florida, which raised nearly $37 million during the run-up to the 2018 election, had nearly $3 million on hand heading into Election Day.

“You lost by 30k votes and kept the money from people who trusted you so that now you can go around the state with a staff preparing for your next run,” Morgan tweeted. “I will tell you that is a huge mistake. Your donors are very disappointed. This is a huge ethical lapse. Give it to charity not yourself. #PoliticsAreAllTheSame.”

Climate change isn’t about the environment. It’s about votes and money.

A co-chair of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, Curbelo was one of the few House Republicans to embrace action on climate change and resisted President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Last year, Curbelo became the first GOP lawmaker in a decade to offer a significant climate change bill, pushing to tax carbon and direct much of the revenue into infrastructure investments.

So how do Democrats respond?

The Ways and Means Committee yanked an invitation for former GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo to testify at a hearing next week after other Democrats became enraged that the panel was offering a prized platform to a longtime foe.

Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) on Friday officially rescinded the invite for Curbelo — who was invited by Democrats and slated to testify about climate change — after facing widespread pressure throughout the caucus, including from leadership.

“The nagging concern that as a white man with a Harvard and Oxford pedigree, he’s the wrong candidate at a moment when Democrats seem to be pining for someone who can embody the lingering inequities faced by less-privileged minorities”

Can’t this question be asked about any current Presidential candidate? Doesn’t it really apply more so to the other candidates or most of the previous prez candidates?

Isn’t the problem really that he’s gay? And that most black people are homophobe bigots, that are not comfortable with gay people? Isn’t this the one thing that black people and conservatives can coalesce about it. The black people are their own demise.

@46 You know, this really is the issue. Kim Davis is entitled to her private religious beliefs. But she was not entitled to use a public office to impose them on others in defiance of the law.

The right-to-life movement and GOP efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade is all about imposing personal beliefs on strangers.

The bloody history of Europe’s Middle Ages, with all its cruelties and atrocities, was about forcing others to accept the perpetrators’ corrupt religion.

These people want the “right” to hate, discriminate against, and exclude others who aren’t exactly like them. And not even because of some historic wrong or deep-seated prejudice, but simply from small-minded fear of “the other.”

R2 Technology has been around for a long time prior to its acquisition by Hologic. Rads would be reviewed by a radiologist and then by R2’s CAD. If there was a discrepancy the study would be kicked back out and sent to additional radiologists for evaluation. Mammography and thoracic radiography for pulmonary nodule detection are the two most active imaging areas of interest.

Same thing is used for Pap smear evaluation by pathologists, Steve.

The thing is, radiologists are not infallible. Humans are not perfect and mistakes occur with known frequency. CAD technology reduces the error rate.

IBM bought Merge-eFilm not long ago, folded it into its Watson venture, and hoped to accelerate the process of backing up radiologists with technology. It has not worked out as hoped, and the effort has been back-burnered for now.

Radiologists are not perfect, Steve, and neither are liberals. The difference is that radiologists realize their imperfections.

Hey, Steve, if you really want to delve into what artificial intelligence is replacing, look at Nuance’s Dragon software and how it has decimated the transcription industry.

Dragon Medical Practice for the PC is amazing. (Dragon’s version for Mac sucks.) It gets better with training – I have better recognition on using my 2.0 version used with Windows 8 laptops than I do using my 4.0 version with Windows 10 and much more memory.

It’s the medical version of ordering kiosks at McDonald’s, Steve. It’s an example of technology driving performance and reducing reliance on lower-paid workers at the same time. So feel free to cheer the advancement of artificial intelligence as if it doesn’t force results counter to your interests, Steve. Just realize that I probably am cheering right along with you, and one of us is benefitting professionally and financially while we cheer.

@66 Glad to see you supporting a candidate who isn’t claiming climate change is a Chinese hoax. Too bad you and Curbelo are unique specimens in the Republican Party. I’m curious where the rest of them plan to live after they’ve fouled our current nest.

We want to piss off ” reliable conservative voting blocs”. Knowing that we are letting down Nazis, Klansmen, ProudBoys, White Supremacists, Guatemalan Toddler Torturers, Cage Rapists, and Pussy Grabbers tells us we are doing the right thing.

The Thumper Right has stepped well beyond Teh Orange Event Horizon. There will be no turning back for them. Their entire cafateria menu of conservative social concerns has been pulled out, placed on display for all to see, and burned into ash with the only exception being reproductive healthcare – the one agenda item they lost decades ago but refuse to admit.

Family values? Gone. Traditional marriage? Gone. Compulsory Christian worship? Gone. Anti-pornography? Gone. Gender conformity? Gone. English only? Gone. Teen abstinence? Gone. Media censorship? Gone. For the sake, essentially, of “owning the libs” the evangelical right gave it all away in trade for a foul mouthed, racist, woman beating, libertine con artist who openly brags about rape. You let your resentments take control and own you. And it has cost you everything that once mattered.

Democrats do not want those votes or those voters. And we know that when their tax exempt pastor orders it they will line up at their polling places to vote once again for cruelty, torture, Porn Payoffs, criminal obstruction, and finger rape. It’s far more important for Democrats to put the spotlight on who these people really are.

Democrats will never, ever be able, much less willing, to become socially conservative enough for the Church Ladies who bomb clinics and the zealots who support them. But we can appeal to more socially moderate voters with a progressive economic agenda and message. Go to the data. Thirty years of unbalanced unregulated globalism, supply side, hostility to union organizing, broken healthcare, education cuts, and Republican-lite economic policy drove those voters into the arms of a fake populist.

Look at the state of the Republican Party. Look at the transformation over the past twenty years. Then ask yourself if you think they have good insights to offer about the best way to move forward as Democrats.

Must resist. (Struggles to control overwhelming urge to write Speaker demanding that she provide opportunities and platforms to the party who refuses to hold a vote on SCOTUS nominees.) Must overcome sense of shame. (Reads in wide eyed amazement about the latest “law and order” Republican fighting to prevent disclosure of crimes).

91, I don’t think Americans in general, and certainly not “conservative” Americans, have any understanding of how fundamentally uncomfortable most Europeans are about injecting religion into civic public life.

It’s truly ironic, therefore, that American evangelical prostelytizing in Europe is most successful among immigrant populations. So quite naturally in the era of Trump they find themselves celebrating opposition to immigration.

Someone isn’t really thinking. The U.S. is still importing more than 10m barrels of crude daily.

What would stop the country from keeping more of the domestic crude for domestic refineries for domestic consumption and drop the levels of imported crude further?

I know several answers but I’m wondering if you do too.

(Psssst…’Drill more, drill here, pay less’. Somewhere above you mentioned keeping the politics of an issue alive can be more valuable than solving it. I wonder if some lobbyists want to keep certain parties in power for reasons having to do with things other than energy policy. Like maybe corporate tax rates and subsidies to some industries?)

“Throughout most of American history, it’s been pretty easy to call yourself Christian,”

Why yes it has been still is. Millions of Americans call themselves Christians. Some of them have read the Bible and understand the teachings. Others think Jesus said not feeding the poor is fine as long as some can get rich.

you might be shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible.

Or more likely you’ll be shunned for following the Apostle Paul on the gays issue instead of Jesus. Or arguing that Jesus came with a New Testament so it’s OK to eat bacon but that stuff Liviticus has to say about those icky gays, THAT SHIT STILL STANDS JESUS AND DON’T YOU DARE BRING US A NEW TESTAMENT.

Or you might be shunned for proclaiming your Christian faith while standing in support of a person who lies regularly. Or maybe shunned for claiming it’s OK to take children of non citizens from their families without any intent to reunite them. Maybe you’ll be shunned for a lifetime of railing against sin and adultery but thrice married fucker of pornstars while the wife is recuperating from birthing your kid? Fine person. My Guy, character counts and all that.

Because our nation and our world need that message of grace and love maybe more now than ever before.

Yawn. Monday morning. Dow minus 582 points. Varian down 3.7%, but as Doctor Dumbfuck will tell you, what’s a measly -3.7%? If he owns 10,000 shares of Varian, he’s merely out $50,000. Hell, that’s only one shiny new F-150. Doesn’t even include a horse trailer. This should be no sweat for him.

Remember Trump’s promises to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? So far, he hasn’t talked the Palestinians into submitting to complete, abject, humiliating submission and subjugation; but he’s working on it.

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